Real analysis takes balls.
Ask HN: Any good math jokes?
101–110 of 139 posts
Re: Ask HN: Any good math jokes?
#102Below is my favorite math joke (copied it from http://www.onlinemathlearning.com/math-jokes-calculus.html as I didn't remember the exact wording). It's a bit long for a T-shirt, but a simple comic strip version could be made. -- A constant function and e^x are walking on Broadway. Then suddenly the constant function sees a differential operator approaching and runs away. So e^x follows him and asks why the hurry. "We…
I think I might have to add "Hi, I'm d/dy" to my mail signature collection. So random.
Re: Ask HN: Any good math jokes?
#103Surprised this isn't already here, pretty popular at my college: I wish I was your derivative, so I could lie tangent to your curves.
And the companion bio-joke: I wish I was mRNA polymerase, so I could unzip your genes.
I've never heard them called "mRNA polymerases." RNA polymerase should do just fine.
In fact, wouldn't helicase do better?
Re: Ask HN: Any good math jokes?
#104Front: (a^n) + (b^n) = (c^n) true only when n Back: I have discovered a truly marvelous proof but this shirt is too too narrow to contain it
Re: Ask HN: Any good math jokes?
#105Re: Ask HN: Any good math jokes?
#106Years ago, three friends from Poland decided to visit relatives in the US they had not seen for decades. Since this was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, they did in grand style, on the Concorde.
Of course, there was trouble on the flight and of course the flight attendants asked if any of the passengers had experience with aircraft, and of course one of our friends did. He was taken to the cockpit to save the day, wherein he looked at the myriad dials and gauges and controls and turned to his friend and said... ...wait for it...
"I am but a simple Pole in a complex plane."
Re: Ask HN: Any good math jokes?
#107One for HN: Q: Why did the two vectors start an internet-based company? A: Because they thought they had a good dot product. One for a t-shirt (stolen off the Internet): Math problems? Call 1-800-[(10x)(13i)^2]-[sin(xy)/2.362x].
In terms of t-shirt type statements, I think this is the best I've read on here.
Re: Ask HN: Any good math jokes?
#108According to statistics, a normal person has one breast and one testicle...
I object! The average person has less than one breast and less than one testicle.
I object again! Statistics say there are slightly less men than women in the states. Therefore, the average person has more than one breast and less than one testicle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat...
Re: Ask HN: Any good math jokes?
#109Q: Did you hear about the constipated mathematician?
A: He worked it out with a pencil.
This one always gets someone to cringe. I love it.
Alternately:
Q: How many mathematicians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: One. The mathematician hands the lightbulb to two blondes, thereby reducing the problem to a previously-told joke.
Re: Ask HN: Any good math jokes?
#110Surprised this isn't already here, pretty popular at my college: I wish I was your derivative, so I could lie tangent to your curves.
That one is so bad, because it doesn't work. Presumably the derivative is used to calculate a tangent line. However, a tangent line touches the curve only at one point, unless the curve is totally flat. Either way, this is not what you want. You want fuckin' Taylor series approximations. (They won't work on curves that aren't smooth, but that's all right, because those are the curves you want to touch anyway.) Aww ye…
Strictly speaking, the Taylor series won't even do what you're wanting them to do for smooth functions. (Consider the function e^{-1/x^2}, whose Taylor series is zero at the origin. In fact, given any sequence of numbers, you can cook up a smooth function which has that sequence as the coefficients of its Taylor series at zero.) If you want the Taylor series to agree with the function in an entire neighborhood of a point, you want the function to be real (or complex) analytic (at least in a neighborhood of that point).